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Defend the Consumer Bureau

STANDING UP FOR CONSUMERS IN THE FINANCIAL MARKETPLACE—For more than 20 years, Consumer Program Director Ed Mierzwinski has helped us stand up against big banks and credit card companies.

A Consumer Cop On the Financial Beat

You work hard for your money. You should be able to save, invest and manage your money without fear of being trapped, tricked or ripped off by the institutions you are trusting with your financial future.

That’s why we need strong consumer protections on Wall Street. And from the 2008 economic collapse, we know how big of an impact those institutions can have on our economy when they play fast and loose with our money. It made it clear: Americans need a watchdog agency on Wall Street, devoted to creating and enforcing fair, clear and transparent rules to protect consumers.

So in 2010, we helped create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to be our consumer cop on the financial beat.

The CFPB Gets the Job Done

Despite the fact that the CFPB is not widely known, they’ve been hugely successful at working for consumers, returning nearly $12 billion to more than 29 million people who were ripped off by companies that broke the law … in just six years.

The CFPB holds big banks, debt collectors and lenders accountable. Here are a few examples of some of the cases the CFPB has taken on to protect consumers:

When American Honda Finance used discriminatory pricing to rip off African-American, Hispanic and Asia/Pacific Island borrowers who paid too much for car loans, the CFPB returned $24 million to these consumers.

The Department of Justice and 47 states joined the CFPB in a $216 million action against JP Morgan Chase Bank for illegal debt collection practices affecting over half a million Americans.

When it was discovered that Wells Fargo employees were opening unauthorized debit and credit accounts using their customer's information, the CFPB fined Wells Fargo $100 million for fraud.

The CFPB fined Equifax and TransUnion — two of the three largest credit reporting agencies — $5 million for selling inflated credit scores to consumers that were different from ones actually used by lenders and returned $17 million to those harmed by the deception.

In addition, the Consumer Bureau has helped level the financial playing field, educating veterans, senior citizens, new homeowners, college students and low-income consumers on how to keep their finances secure.

The Consumer Bureau's success should be earning it applause in Washington. Yet instead of cheering on the Consumer Bureau, the Trump administration and some members of Congress are pushing to weaken or even get rid of it.

Tell Your Senators: Stand Up For Consumers

We can keep our consumer cop on the financial beat — but only if we can convince enough senators to stand up and be counted as Consumer Champions, and stop any bad bills that try to roll back or eliminate consumer protections.

Even with the Consumer Bureau on the job, many Americans are still at risk of reckless financial practices that threaten their homes, their retirement savings and their overall well-being. That’s why we don’t simply need the CFPB to exist: We need to make it even better, by strengthening commonsense consumer protections.

In the wake of the Great Recession, we helped spearhead the creation of the Consumer Bureau. Now, we need your help to stand up for consumer protection once again, and defend the CFPB from those who would weaken or eliminate it.

Issue updates

This week, fifty leading state and national consumer, civil rights, military family, faith and other groups joined Travel Buddy (letter to regulators) in urging the FTC and CFPB to investigate a security flaw (apparently fixed) at the credit bureau Experian. As originally reported by Nerdwallet, whose findings were confirmed by Travel Buddy, access to "secret" PINs to temporarily lift credit freezes was left available to anyone who answered "none of the above" to security questions.

Ten years ago this weekend the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers marked the massive financial collapse of 2008. Millions of Americans lost homes, jobs and trillions of dollars in retirement savings. Today, the financial collapse hasn't been forgotten, it's being ignored by Congress and Wall Street.

On Thursday, 13 September, the House Financial Services Committee is to consider the latest in a long series of data security and data breach bills that Congress takes up at the request of the banks. These Trojan Horse bills come riding in with few, if any, protections riding in the saddle, but massive elimination of stronger state laws hidden in the belly of the beasts. The proposal, HR6743, the Consumer Information Notification Requirement Act (Luetkemeyer (MO)), might also be called the “Equifax Protection Act.”

We've joined leading consumer, civil rights, labor and older American organizations in a comment letter urging the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to strengthen its proposed "Regulation Best Interest" intended to ensure that all broker-dealers and other individuals and firms offering investment advice act do so in a fiduciary capacity, or in the best interest of their investor-clients. (Right now, it doesn't).

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Our statement on final passage by the U.S. Senate of a sweeping bank deregulation bill: Excerpt: "“It’s very hard to watch the Senate vote to ignore the painful lessons from the causes of the Great Recession 10 years ago. The warning signs are plain to see."

Here's our statement on modest changes to the free credit freeze provision of S2155, the massive bank regulation deregulation package on the Senate floor. The changes aren't good enough because the states would still be preempted from better protecting their consumers and some existing state laws would be rolled back.

Remember Equifax? It's one of the nation's Big 3 credit bureaus. It's based in Atlanta. Still not sure? Oh, maybe you'll remember this: Equifax finally admitted in September that months earlier it had lost 145 million consumer records, including Social Security Numbers, to hackers. Here's our latest release explaining that instead of holding Equifax accountable, this week Congress is busy trying to help Equifax.

Today Equifax admitted to losing information for over 2 million more Americans. Here's our release explaining why it's time for Congress to follow the lead of several states and hold Equifax accountable, insead of letting it off the hook.

Travel Buddy experts comment on a case heard before the Supreme Court Monday concerning whether American Express rules preventing merchants from steering customers to alternative lower-cost cards violate the antitrust laws. Hint: We agree with and supported several states that brought the case on behalf of their citizens. We also make the point that unless the states prevail, the practices of dominant tech platforms like Google and Amazon and Facebook will also be immunized from action.

Overdraft fees are a major source of consumer pain, since they are borne disproportionately by Americans with few financial resources. Through the first three quarters of 2016, 626 large banks reported collecting $8.4 billion in revenue from overdraft and NSF fees, an increase of 3.6 percent over the same period in 2015. American consumers should look to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which has already enforced overdraft regulations and returned millions of dollars to consumers, to take new action to prevent unfair overdraft fees.

This report examines the growing use of "Big Data" in financial decision-making, especially in a digital marketplace characterized more and more by the use of mobile phones. It explains the opportunities to use Big Data to promote financial opportunity and the threat of financial exclusion, discrimination or higher prices for some consumers if Big Data is not used properly. The report makes recommendations to advocates, industry and regulators.

Over the last six months, state PIRG staff conducted inquiries at 250 bank and 116 credit union branches in 17 states and the District of Columbia and reviewed bank fees online in these and 7 other states. They found that free checking remains available at more than 6 out of 10 small banks and credit unions but was only found at one-quarter of surveyed big banks (those with over $10 billion in deposits).

Since Congress largely deregulated consumer deposit (checking and savings) accounts beginning in the early 1980s, the PIRGs have tracked bank deposit account fee changes and documented the banks’ long-term strategy to raise fees, invent new fees and make it harder to avoid fees.

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On Thursday, 13 September, the House Financial Services Committee is to consider the latest in a long series of data security and data breach bills that Congress takes up at the request of the banks. These Trojan Horse bills come riding in with few, if any, protections riding in the saddle, but massive elimination of stronger state laws hidden in the belly of the beasts. The proposal, HR6743, the Consumer Information Notification Requirement Act (Luetkemeyer (MO)), might also be called the “Equifax Protection Act.”

We've joined leading consumer, civil rights, labor and older American organizations in a comment letter urging the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to strengthen its proposed "Regulation Best Interest" intended to ensure that all broker-dealers and other individuals and firms offering investment advice act do so in a fiduciary capacity, or in the best interest of their investor-clients. (Right now, it doesn't).

We joined leading consumer organizations to criticize the national bank regulator OCC's new proposal to charter non-bank fintech companies. We called it both illegal and a gateway for online predatory lenders to enter states where high-cost payday lending is banned. Leading state bank regulatory officials also opposed the OCC move, which is also one of the recommendations in a controversial Treasury Department report released the same day.

Monday, June 4, at midnight (ET) marks the deadline for filing public comments on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s latest inward-facing Request For Information (RFI); this one is on the future of the public Consumer Complaint Database, which has been disparaged for years by various bank industry actors and their coin-operated think tanks but most recently by the CFPB’s acting director, Mick Mulvaney. Here's why we are fighting to keep the database public.

Today, we sent a letter addressed to all members of the House of Represenatives in opposition to S. 2155, or as we call it, the Bank Lobbyist Act. We are joined by 84 other groups and leaders, representing communities, consumers, servicemember, and workers across the country. In particular, this letter explains how the bill benefits Equifax and the other national credit bureaus at the expense of average consumers and our military servciemembers.